


The Test of Courage (and How to Fail It)

by Paint_It_Yellow



Series: Pokemon Ranger AU [2]
Category: Servamp (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Based off of that test of courage thing from the ranger school, Gen, Pokemon Ranger AU, Specifically based in Almia, You don't need to know anything about the ranger games or really pokemon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 23:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10955166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paint_It_Yellow/pseuds/Paint_It_Yellow
Summary: Koyuki is forced to take the Test of Courage, being new at Ranger School and all. It sucks and it's all Sakuya's fault.





	The Test of Courage (and How to Fail It)

This was a bad idea, a very bad idea. Koyuki wasn't sure why he agreed to do this.

"It's a tradition, he said, you'll be _fine,_ he said," Koyuki muttered as his friend Ryuusei traipsed after him down the stairs.

"Well it's not like Sakuya was lying, it _is_ a tradition, it has been for quite a few years now!" Ryuusei replied, hands behind his head, seeming completely relaxed.

"Well I want to know who started this tradition because I want to put a stop to it!"

"Unlikely, it was started by some students who joined the academy when it was basically brand new and then they went on to save basically the world."

Koyuki sighed in annoyance, still not seeing why he had to do it since he had joined later on in the year compared to the rest of his classmates, who had all taken the 'Test of Courage' in groups during their first week at the school. The wooden steps creaked under his footsteps despite his attempt to keep them light and as such, despite his efforts early on, by the time he was halfway down the stairwell he had already given up all hope on being discreet, gaining minimal comfort with Ryuusei's helpful advice of 'The teachers are heavy sleepers anyway, don't worry about it'.

"So where's the first styler then?" Koyuki turned to ask as the creaking from the stairs stopped, notifying him that Ryuusei had also reached the bottom of the stairs.

He was met with a shrug, a very simple way of telling Koyuki that he was only there for moral support and would not, in any way, be useful. At all. The hallway was quiet for the most part until there was an unmistakable cry coming from the shadows right before them. Koyuki suppressed a scream from the shock, he hadn't realised that Pokémon actively ran around the school at night, though honestly, he wasn't too surprised at the fact the more he mulled over it. The teachers of the school could only be described as extremely laid back, no wonder they found no problems in the way the school was run. Students weren't supposed to be out of their rooms come night anyway, so that's only feeding the lack of concern. As Koyuki's eyes adjusted to the darkness of the large hallway ahead of him, he could make out a small figure and the more he ventured forward he realised that it was only a common Bidoof. It seemed that he hadn't been to subtle in his approach either though as the brown creature let out a cry of surprise and ran off away from the two students, albeit in the same direction that Koyuki was planning to go in the first place. Hoping that the Bidoof would get out of the way when he came back, Koyuki decided to instead go to the room along the other corridor, belonging to one of the two teachers in the school.

As he opened the door he was met with a somewhat startling sight. Crates covered the usually normal looking classroom and Zubat seemed to have claimed the territory as their own. The few desks in the class were clear for the most part though he couldn't be sure due to the lack of light and the apparent rule that he couldn't use lights at all seeing as this was a test of courage (he didn't believe that one bit but he decided he could at least humour Sakuya a little). Ryuusei had mentioned that he was going to wait in the hallway, seeming to not want to enter the classroom for whatever reason, he was probably just scared in reality. Either way, Koyuki was about to leave the classroom, having seen no styler in sight, before he noticed a gleam come from one of the wooden crates. He sighed for what felt like the tenth time just in the past half an hour and made his way back out of the classroom, ignoring Ryuusei's somewhat half-hearted taunts of him 'bailing out' on the whole test of courage, and making a strict beeline for the Bidoof that hadn't moved one inch from where it had fled to before. He wasn't even that scary, well, Ryuusei was a bit scary actually, never mind.

"Capture on!" Koyuki whispered, drawing his left arm in front of him and towards the Bidoof, a machine resembling a spinning top coming out from the small attachment on his glove and heading towards said Pokémon.

It was to be noted that Koyuki wasn't even at the school to become a ranger, as such he had never used a Styler before, let alone catch a Pokémon, though it was with slight gratitude that Koyuki had at least received a briefing and short demonstration of how capturing worked from Mahiru beforehand, much to Sakuya and Ryuusei's disappointment (they seemed to just want him to suffer).

As he drew his arm into a circle repeatedly, he watched the stylus leave a bright blue light glowing around the Bidoof, though the lines were rather shaky. As the Bidoof seemed to ready a tackle towards him, Koyuki recoiled, his arm no longer drawing a circle and causing the stylus to stop dead in its tracks, spinning in place, while the glowing line disappeared.

He took a step back, managing to escape the Bidoof's blow, and he took a glance at Ryuusei who was watching with a small smirk on his face before actually speaking up after a moment of consideration.

"Hurry up or you'll take even longer!" He called over, louder than he really needed to be though Koyuki was sure that was just his naturally loud voice kicking in.

He hissed as he glanced to the device on his arm, a yellow bar slowly decreasing the more he looked at it. He turned his attention back to the Bidoof and started to drag his arm into a circle before the Bidoof could run away any further from him. He wasn't sure if he was even going to have an arm by the end of the day, his arm already sore from the mediocre speed of which he had been drawing the loops beforehand. In the end though, he had managed to capture the Bidoof and it followed him back into the classroom, Ryuusei deciding to follow him this time also. He took immense care in avoiding the Zubats in the room, heading straight for the crate by the side of the teachers desk, where the gleam had come from before. For a moment he stood looking between Bidoof and the crate before realising that he had no idea how to utilise the field move of said Pokémon. Desperate times call for desperate measures and as such, he turned to Ryuusei to help.

"Just tell it to use tackle on the crate, you're overthinking it!"

Well excuse him for not really getting how to do something he'd never done before and, after this night, would likely never do again.

"Uh, Bidoof, use tackle on that crate," He directed, pointing his Bidoof's attention to the crate they had been standing in front of.

Turns out Ryuusei was being helpful for once and that _was_ actually how you did it. The wooden crate broke apart into pieces and Koyuki pet the Bidoof on the head awkwardly and thanked it for its work before it decided to run off back to the halls. He rummaged through the broken wood and found the source of the gleam- a school styler, not unlike the one had was using right now, differentiated from a usual styler by being blue and green instead of red and yellow.

"Of course that's what I'm looking for, what else was I expecting," The brunette sighed, scratching his head as he pocketed the styler and made his retreat from the room.

The duo headed towards the other room that was also covered in the same kind of wooden crates as the class they had just exited, though this time Koyuki could very clearly see the styler sitting on the teachers desk. He decided he had two options here, go back out to capture the Bidoof again and get it to smash one of the crates blocking his way to the desk, or he could just climb over the crates. He glanced at Ryuusei who seemed to have already turned towards the door.

_"Well I suppose I know what he did when he did this test of courage," Koyuki thought._

Instead, Koyuki took a few steps back from the crate in front of him and made a running jump, hurdling straight over it in a surprising display of his athletic ability. He landed with a rather loud thud, afterwards followed by a round of applause from his only audience. He didn't even give the applause the time of day though as he grabbed the styler, climbed onto the desk and jumped on top of the crate and back off it as quickly as he could, after a small moment to catch his breath, of course.

"Only two more to go!" Ryuusei announced though Koyuki wasn't sure whether that was encouraging or not.

"I hope they don't take too long..." Koyuki mentioned, though Ryuusei didn't reply to that, just ignoring the statement and leading Koyuki to the door to the library.

"I'm going to wait out here, this shouldn't take you too long," He had stated, leaning against the wall. Koyuki narrowed his eyes in suspicion but pressed on either way.

The library was the eeriest place he had been to thus far. It was already dark enough without the bookcases casting even darker shadows and Pokémon clustering around each area. There didn't seem to be any obstacles he had to face like the last two rooms, unless the swarm of Zubats blocking his way counted which, in his book, totally counted. It didn't take long for them to move though. Towards him. He let out a small screech at the same time they let out a collective cry and surged towards him. He clutched his hair in his hands and surged through the centres of the ambush, taking a moment to glance around the room, spotting the styler on one of the tables and turning left in haste to grab it. The Zubats would have cornered him at this point had he not had the genius idea to climb onto the desk and charge straight over it and towards the door. As he slammed the door behind him he sunk down against it for a moment in order to catch his breath and realise that he hadn't passed out in fear.

Ryuusei grinned, "Have fun in there?!"

"Why are there Zubats everywhere in this stupid school?!" He gasped out, exasperated.

Ryuusei just shrugged, following his trend of being extremely helpful. Koyuki didn't even care at this point, heading over to what he supposed was the last area- the staff room. The door opened and, while still dark, there was a lack of crates. A lack of anything different really. He couldn't see a styler anywhere and turning to ask Ryuusei about it, he looked just as confused.

"I'm sure Sakuya said he put it here," He said, scratching his head in confusion.

"Well does this mean we can end the 'test of courage' early then?"

"Suppose s-"

Ryuusei was cut off by a quiet cry from a Pokémon came from the opposite side of the room, a pointed ear being spotted from behind the long desk. Koyuki, curious, made his way towards the Pokémon with Ryuusei following behind him. As soon as the two managed to catch a good glance of the Pokémon, now notified to be a Pichu, it ran off away from them.

"Catch that Pichu!" Ryuusei announced, having noticed the Styler in its grasp.

Koyuki gave a brisk nod and the two chased after the unimaginably fast Pichu. It was about five minutes of them both chasing that they realised that they needed a strategy for this because just blindly chasing it wasn't working out for them.

"How about this," Koyuki asked, halting Ryuusei, "You and I... Go opposite ways and trap it."

"Wow, creative idea."

"I know, thanks."

Sarcasm aside, the two followed through with the plan and no one could say it didn't work... Eventually. It seemed that the Pichu was also evasive, taking the two more than a few rounds around the long table before they managed to effectively trap it. In the end they didn't really stop it though, it had knocked into Ryuusei's leg, stumbled, and dropped the stylus as it gained balance again, Koyuki taking the initiative to swipe it up from the ground. The two headed out after that, leaving the Pichu looking a bit dejected but otherwise unharmed.

Koyuki headed towards the stairs again before Ryuusei caught his wrist.

"Not so fast, we gotta put these back where we got 'em."

Koyuki tilted his head slightly, he had assumed that they used the stylers of the other students. Turns out it wasn't as Koyuki followed Ryuusei's glance towards the basement.

"You've got to be kidding me..."

"You wish," Ryuusei grinned, patting his friend on the back and dragging him towards the basement, "You first."

Koyuki took a deep breath and gave a nod, more to assure himself than anything else. After reaching the bottom of the stairs he realised he doesn't ever want to come down here again. There wasn't a light switch by the stairwell and yet the room was darker than most of the other rooms, papers strewn across the room and two wooden barriers blocking their way. He looked at Ryuusei who seemed to have assumed this was normal.

"It was like this when I did it too, I think that it's part of the test or something," He shrugged.

Well, that was the best explanation he was going to get. He took a glance around. He was going to need a Pokémon to get past this barrier, no way he was climbing up and over it. He didn't trust that he wasn't going to have to charge his way back out.

"You could probably use a Zubat to cut through it," Ryuusei interjected.

Koyuki wanted to give a sarcastic comment of _"Ryuusei? Being useful? Woah,"_ But he held it in.

He put his arms over the top of the barrier and pulled himself up to get a glance over it, he spotted a Zubat that hadn't noticed him and whistled to catch its attention. A bad idea, yes, but an effective one. The Zubat took very little time to fly over the top of the barrier but Koyuki was prepared this time with his styler at the ready.

"Capture on!"

It took slightly longer than the Bidoof did, his arm still sore from lifting him over the barrier, but he managed to catch it nonetheless.

"Zubat, use cut on that barrier," He whispered, pointing towards the wooden barrier.

As soon as the field move had been applied and the barrier had fell in large chunks of wood, the Zubat left back up the stairs to who knows where, not that Ryuusei or Koyuki even cared. They rushed past the corner, increasingly unsettled by the lack of light and, as they turned the corner, they were greeted with a purple wisp of smoke, known also as a Ghastly. The two screeched and a small amount of light spilled from the room that they were planning to put the stylers in around the corner.

"Who's there?" Came a voice that was unmistakably from one of their teachers.

"Shoot," Ryuusei hissed, clearly trying his best not to curse, "Just drop the stylers and let's _go_."

"I _said_ , who's there?!" The voice came again, though there was a step following it as Koyuki did as advised and dropped the stylers, the two charging off back up to the common area. They were greeted by both the girls and the boys who had been waiting for them to return out of their rooms.

"So how'd it go?" Mahiru asked.

"Great, peachy, amazing... I'm going to bed," Koyuki sighed, barging past the crowd and heading towards the boys room, collapsing on Sakuyas bunk since his was on the top and he couldn't be bothered climbing. Plus, if he had to suffer through that so called 'Test of Courage' then Sakuya had to suffer not having his bed.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking of making this into a series of snippets but I just made this since I don't have a good track record when it comes to ongoing things. I might make more though, this was pretty fun.
> 
> I wasn't initially going to have this focus on Koyuki and Ryuusei but oops look what happened. Hope anyone who reads this all the way through enjoyed it regardless.


End file.
